"Come on, you have to." Liz giggled as she polished off her third beer, setting it down with a sharp thud. "That was our deal. I'm the one who took down our guy, now it's your turn to do karaoke."

"Now hold on a minute. This isn't fair. I'm the one who found that bogus transaction on his bank statement."

"No," she corrected, "Aram found that."

"Yeah, right, and then I...I expertly deduced his motive and probable location based on it."

"And that's right where I put the cuffs on him." Liz grinned. "I'll let you pick the song this time."

"Yeah alright, you just...you just prepared to be wowed, Elizabeth Keen. Because I'm going to bring this house down."

Liz snorted as her friend and colleague stood and tipped back the last of his beer. "Watch and learn," he said, running a hand through his perfectly coiffed blonde hair. He would have quite an audience, as the bar seemed more crowded than usual tonight. As he walked away toward the makeshift stage, Liz could feel his phone vibrate against the wood surface of the bar.

"Wait, Ressler! Your phone's ringing." She tossed it to him.

"Ha! Saved by the bell." He looked at the screen; the number was unfamiliar. "I'll be right back."

"You'd better be," she teased. "Your fans are waiting." She smiled to herself. Over the past couple of months the two of them had developed a sort of relaxed, easy friendship, and although they had yet to spend time together outside of a bar on a weeknight, Liz was mulling the idea of asking him to breakfast sometime. Maybe even on a Saturday. (On the other hand, did she really want this to become something serious? More often than not, he felt like nothing more than an annoying older brother—one that she loved dearly, but also wanted to smack upside the head most of the time.)

Ressler stepped out into the crisp night air, tugging at the collar of his jacket as he held the phone to his ear. "Ressler," he said gruffly.

"Donald!" the caller responded cheerfully. "Did you miss me?"

He furrowed his brow. "Who is this?"

"It's Raymond Reddington. I have something for you."

"You'll never guess who that was," Ressler said as he rejoined Liz at the bar.

"Hmmm," she mused, "it wouldn't happen to be that cute red-haired girl I gave your number to last week, would it?"

"No… wait, you did what?"

"Oh come on, don't pretend you didn't notice her ogling you all night. I told her I was your sister and—"

"It was Reddington," Ressler cut in, his expression serious.

Liz's breath caught in her chest, a shiver creeping down her spine. "What?"

"Says he has something for us...probably another blacklister. He wanted me to ask you if you'd come along to meet him tomorrow morning at nine. Here's the address…" he held up his phone so she could see the map. "Actually, I'll just text it to you. Not sure why he didn't talk to you himself...you two have a little spat or something?"

Liz sighed. "Something like that." She twisted off her wedding ring and turned it over and over in the palm of her hand, something she'd taken to doing a lot lately whenever she was lost in thought.

Ressler frowned, taking in her sudden change in demeanor. "Maybe we should call it a night, eh?"

"Yeah," she said warily. "You and I both know that tomorrow could be a very long day."

How does he find these places? Liz thought as she and Ressler pulled up in front of what appeared to be an abandoned auto repair place in yet another remote, industrialized area of the city. Dembe greeted them with little more than a nod as he led them to a set of stairs descending into the basement. Ressler headed down first; just as Liz was about to follow she felt Dembe's hand brush lightly against the small of her back.

"It's good to see you Elizabeth," he said quietly before taking a step back, his expression quickly returning to its usual stoicism. She flashed him a brief smile, allowing herself to wonder for a moment about what exactly Red had done to gain such unswerving loyalty.

"Agent Ressler!" Red exclaimed, his voice jovial. "It's been far too long." He opened his arms as if to invite an embrace, which Ressler carefully avoided. The room was lit by banks of fluorescent lights, many of which were either burnt out or flickering ominously. The walls were plastered with layers of graffiti, as well as a number of empty metal shelving units and wooden workbenches that were probably covered in car parts and jugs of motor oil at one point in time.

"You wanna tell me where you've been the past two months?" Ressler cocked an eyebrow.

"Not really." Red smiled. His eyes flicked to the staircase where Liz's black pumps had just come into view. He stared as the rest of her followed, nearly forgetting to breathe, his face betraying an eagerness similar to the day they first met.

She tried her best not to smile at him, or show any emotion at all, really. After all, this was a business meeting between law enforcement and an informant—nothing more.

"Agent Keen, I'm glad you could make it," he said calmly.

Something stirred to his left; Liz was surprised to see Aram sitting cross-legged on one of the wooden workbenches lining the south side of the room. He seemed relaxed as he leaned against the wall, apparently waiting to be called on.

"Aram? What are you doing here?" she asked, ignoring Red's greeting.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Red cut him off. "I asked Aram to come a little early and lend his technological expertise. I'm really not good at explaining these sorts of things," he said with a chuckle. "Why don't you tell them about their next target, Aram?"

"Sure," Aram said, hopping to the floor. "So. From what Mr. Reddington has told me, our next guy is fairly new to the scene. He's young, probably in his early 20s, and specializes in biometrics."

"So that's like...retina scans, palm prints, that type of stuff, right?" Ressler asked.

"Yes, exactly. But this guy, he's sort of old school—he's only interested in fingerprints. He can take a fingerprint from anywhere and make a three-dimensional representation of it using a modeling program he wrote himself. He then runs that data through a consumer-grade 3D printer and, quite literally, prints fingers." Aram reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out what appeared to be a neatly severed human finger.

"I managed to get ahold of a prototype," Red explained as Aram passed the finger to Liz. There was really no need to tell them that he'd swiped it from the pocket of a man he'd recently executed...

Liz made a face. "This feels like real skin," she said, passing it to Ressler who immediately grimaced.

"That's the thing…I can't figure out what materials he used until we bring it back to the lab and test it. But it works...it actually works."

"Wait," Ressler said, holding up the fake finger. "This is someone's actual fingerprint? Whose?"

"Greg Patterson," Red offered. He sounded bored. "He's a low-level NSA desk jockey, a fairly benign target if you ask me."

"That's why we think this one is just an early prototype. Once I got a hit on the fingerprint, I was able to use it to gain basic access to NSA's private database," Aram said.

"Think of it this way," Red began. "Before this guy came on the scene, criminals had to go around sawing people's fingers off. It was sloppy, and messy, and just...really inconvenient." He paused when he noticed everyone's mouth hanging open. "Oh please, and ruin a completely good pair of Italian lambskin cashmere gloves? I'd hire someone." There it was: that infuriating nonchalance. It really was chilling how casually he could speak of such "light" topics as death and dismemberment.

Aram slowly tore his eyes away from Red, turning to face Liz and Ressler. "...so anyway, if you think about some of these recent password breaches, where millions of customer records have been exposed by hackers… you know that if that happens to you, you just need to cancel your credit card and change your password. But what happens when your fingerprint is released to the general public? Mass-produced, mass-distributed. Then what?"

"You can't change your fingerprint," Liz pointed out.

"Exactly." Aram shoved his hands into his pockets and stepped to the side, aware that his part in this meeting was more or less done.

"Alright, so where do we find this guy...this Fingerprinter? Do you know him?" Ressler asked.

"I've never seen him, but I'd recognize the buyer he's meeting tonight aboard the Cherry Blossom," Red said.

"The Cherry Blossom?" Liz asked, addressing him directly for the first time.

"Yes, Agent Keen. If you want the best moonlight dinner cruise on the Potomac, you're going to want to go with the Cherry Blossom," he explained. "They're having a black tie gala there tonight—there will be dinner, and dancing...oh, and they're bringing in a superb jazz quintet from Brooklyn…"

"Sounds wonderful," Ressler interjected, crossing his arms. Talking to Reddington always made him so damn grumpy. "And let me guess, you need a date?"

Red smirked. "You know Donald, I don't usually go for blondes, but for you I might be willing to make an exception." He batted his eyelashes for added effect.

Ressler rolled his eyes as he turned to Liz. "A little help here?"

"If you don't want to go, Agent Keen, I'm sure Ms. Malik would be happy to—"

"Oh for God's sake, I'll go," Liz said, perhaps a little too angrily. At first she had hated it when he called her "Lizzie." Now when he called her "Agent Keen" it made her want to punch something.

Red smiled. "Excellent, because we're already on the guest list."

"Of course we are." She pursed her lips, once again irritated by his presumptuousness.

"Tell us about the buyer," Ressler said.

"Farid al-Midani. He's Syrian, and like much of the criminal world, he has a keen interest in gaining access to American military intelligence. He'll pay anything to get what our guy can offer him."

"We'll have to run this by Director Cooper," Liz said.

"Of course. Do give Harold my best. And tell him not to worry: a little dinner, a little dancing, and you'll be going home with two bad guys for the price of one. It'll be a piece of cake… or in our case, a piece of decadent blackberry cheesecake…"

"Alright, alright. We'll get back to you in a couple hours," Ressler started towards the stairwell.

"Dembe will give you my new number. Now if you don't mind, I'd like just a moment alone with Agent Keen."

Ressler shot Liz a questioning glance, to which she responded with a nod and a sigh. He accepted a slip of paper from Dembe as he and Aram headed upstairs to the garage, leaving Liz to fend for herself.

"You bastard," she snarled as soon as the door clicked shut. She marched toward Red, fully intending to slap him in the face.

He let her.

Dembe pretended to examine a particularly colorful patch of graffiti as the sound—first of her heels clicking steadily, then of her palm meeting his cheek—echoed off the concrete walls. Red barely flinched, his fierce green eyes locked on hers as her lashes began to glisten with tears.

"I was worried sick," she whispered, throwing her arms around his neck as he wrapped his tightly around her waist.

"Then I take it you've forgiven me," he spoke against her neck, the vibrations of his voice sending something like fire surging through her veins.

She didn't reply at first, opting instead to press herself more tightly against him. After a moment or two she stepped back, her expression somewhat sheepish. "Is that why you left?"

"Among other reasons...I thought you might benefit from some time away from me."

Oh how wrong he had been. "I kept thinking about that afternoon after Sam's funeral...on the swings? I thought you were just taking advantage of me, so I would open up to you. Then I realized: you were grieving too."

His eyes were sad—whether at the memory of that day, or at her dark appraisal of his motives, she wasn't sure. "I ran into Tom outside the hospital the day he died," he said quietly. "If I hadn't done what I did, I'm convinced that he would have done much worse."

She nodded, her jaw tightening at the thought of Tom getting anywhere near Sam. "Well then, I'm glad the last thing he saw was the face of a friend." She paused to wipe the tears from her face and attempted to regain her composure. "I...I should really go," she said. "Ressler's waiting." She desperately wanted to stay with him and yet she couldn't bear to look at him, which meant that it was definitely time to leave.

"Lizzie," he called out as she started up the stairs. "What color dress will you be wearing tonight?"

"Uh...I don't know, navy blue?"

"How about green?" His eyes sparkled.

She smiled. "Green it is."

To be continued.